AC/DC Shook Melbourne So Hard Earthquake-Detectors Picked It Up

AC/DC’s first show in their home country in a decade was so powerful the sound waves registered on earthquake detection equipment. The band apparently took their 1980 hit “You Shook Me All Night Long” literally in Melbourne when they kicked off the Australian leg of their Power Up tour.

According to Australia’s ABC News, the Seismology Research Centre in nearby Richmond picked up the vibrations in the 2-5 hertz range and locals also took to social media to discuss the strikingly loud music. The show took place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground stadium, a little more than two miles from the Centre, but one resident living over six miles away also told ABC that they heard the concert too.

Still, Adam Pascale, a chief scientist at the Centre, told the publication that seismology is not just about how loud the concert was to the ear. “We’re picking up the ground motion, we’re not picking up the sound from the air. So you’ve got speakers on the ground pumping out vibrations and that gets transmitted through the ground, but also the crowd jumping up and down is feeding energy into the ground.”

Pascale also said that the enthusiasm of the crowd is really what pushes a concert into earth-shaking territory. “If everyone’s sort of bouncing in unison, it tends to amplify the signal so we can pick it up a little bit better,” he said. “Whereas, if it’s sort of just general crowd motion, like even at the grand final at the MCG, we can still pick that up.” Pascale said AC/DC’s vibrations were no match for Taylor Swift’s in 2024, which emitted the largest signals they’ve registered from a show. 

AC/DC’s aptly named Power Up Tour started in Europe last year, where it sold more than two million tickets for 24 shows before going on to sell out in North America. They kicked off the U.S. leg of the tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota this April. In Melbourne, the band played a favorite from their back-catalogue, “Jailbreak” for the first time since 1991.